James Wolpaw

An Academy Award Nominee for his documentary Keats
and His Nightingale: A Blind Date (1985), Jim Wolpaw has been an
independent filmmaker for over 30 years. In addition to Keats his films include Cobra
Snake for a Necktie (Showtime, 1980), a portrait of rock and roll
legend Bo Diddley; the feature comedy Complex World (Hemdale, 1992); Loaded
Gun: Life, and Death, and Dickinson- (PBS, 2003), a whimsical
consideration of the poet Emily Dickinson, recently named by Booklist
as one of its “Ten Best Poetry Films”; and First Face: The Buck Starts Here (PBS
, 2011), a ‘biography’ of Gilbert Stuart’s “dollar bill” portrait of George
Washington.

Current projects include Best Judgment: Ladd School
Lessons, an examination of Rhode Island’s (now closed) institution for
the developmentally disabled; Famous in the Neighborhood, an
experimental documentary on the late poet and activist Daniel Thompson; and Sweet
Velocity, a narrative feature (with producer Jamie Gordon).